Ideas and resources to help you think more creatively

Don’t let the trolls crush your creativity

One of the reasons people fail to embrace their creativity, is the fear of ridicule. Whilst no one wants to be ridiculed, we can’t let this fear stop us from allowing our creativity to flourish.

So, here are some thoughts on how to overcome the fear.

The vocal minority

There’s a tiny section of every community, far less than 1% in my experience, who are vocally opposed to anything progressive or different. Whilst these individuals are usually either poorly informed or totally uninformed, fear of their venom has stopped many creative people from ever getting started.

Those are the people we should pay least attention to, yet because they are often the loudest, they grab our attention. We need to fix this, if we want to embrace and benefit from our full creative potential!

How to deal with the 1%

The first step, is to accept that as soon as we try anything different, we will stand out and once we stand out, the vocal 1% will see us.

The third step, is to understand that regardless of what we have produced, AND how little they understand it, they will still decry it. It’s what they do. Remember, I’m not talking about reasonable, informed professionals who you have gone to for educated feedback – I’m referring to that tiny minority of trolls and flamers, who attack by default, whenever they see anything new or different.

Finally, we need to remember that every super successful idea or innovation has been attacked by the 1% in their community. For example:

People said that the iPad was too expensive to sell in any real numbers, during a recession. It went on to become the fastest selling piece of consumer electronics and reinvent the tablet computer.

People said Amazon was crazy to invest so much money in the development of the Kindle and electronic books, because consumers would never pay similar prices for digital and paper products.

In my own life, I remember people saying I was insane to move away from London to live in the countryside – that my marketing business would die. In fact, it grew massively and now operates internationally.

It makes a lot of sense to seek qualified feedback from people, whose opinions you know you can trust. However, we can’t allow the fear of what a tiny minority of peevish or simply ill-informed people to kill our dreams, before we get started.